Selfishness is never a pretty thing but it is at its ugliest when it masquerades as some kind of lofty nobility. That pose not only gets the green bigots good press, it also helps recruit the young and uninformed to their movement -- especially the young who have been misinformed on college and university campuses.
There is another selfish aspect of the green bigots that the media never seem to discuss: Restrictions on the building of new housing raises the value of existing housing -- and the leaders of the environmental movement usually already have theirs.
As David Whelan of Forbes magazine put it: "They preserve their 25 percent annual appreciation by extending everyone else's commute."
Every community has to have nurses, teachers, and policemen, but people in these occupations are seldom paid enough to be able to live where they work when local housing prices skyrocket because of laws banning the building of homes on most of the local land. That means commuting from far enough away to be able to afford a house or an apartment.
It is not just the poor who cannot live in the places where affluent environmentalists have political clout. People making a hundred grand a year often cannot afford to live in Palo Alto, adjacent to Stanford University, or in much of Marin County or San Mateo County, adjacent to San Francisco. Especially if they have a family to support.
These are all enclaves "protected" by the green bigots.
People with children are being forced out of these places so much that schools are being shut down for lack of students. The black population of these places is also declining, even though the total population is rising. But green trumps black.
What "protecting," "preserving," and "saving" mean is using the law to impose the will of the green bigots on others.